Festival pics

There’s the postcard. There are actually a few thousand krathongs in the water, but most of the candles blew out about four seconds after the shivering 10-year-old put them into the lake. It was quite sad to watch, actually. Everyone brought their krathongs to the edge of the lake and handed them down to one of about a dozen shivering children, who stood in the water all night collecting 10 baht per krathong to cast the city’s sins into the apparently very cold water.

This is one of four stages that hosted simultaneous performances from about 8 pm until god knows when. The entertainment ranged from traditional dancing (above) to a surprisingly lively rock/pop show (below).

I’m not sure who the singer is, but a few Thais told me she is a “superstar.” They seem to toss that word around a lot here, but I get the impression she is at least semi-famous over here. There was a huge crowd at the show, and they got a bit rowdy when she sang ‘Zombie.’

This is the Miss Chaiyaphum pageant. There were 20-30 girls competing, all dressed in gorgeous silk dresses like these. They mostly just stood on the stage while somebody rattled on in Thai, but at one point they all walked one by one to the end of the stage and did a bit of a turn before walking back to their places. We didn’t stick around for the whole thing, but I don’t think there was a swimsuit round.